so how hard is race stripping a harness?
 

i'm really not worried about weight so much, although it would be a nice plus. main thing is i'm sick of these harness problems i've had. my car has over 200k miles. and over 100k of those were turbocharged. not sure how many on track, but i've done many track days/weekends over the last 3 years. i've had to replace many wires, and right now it won't start. no spark and i've replaced the inj. harness, link ecu, cas, coil pack, ecu harness and still nothing. i've had it. only thing left is to strip and start from scratch.

It's easier to build a new harness from scratch. Honestly, unless you're doing that it's not worth the work. I did it on my last Miata and saved like 10-15lbs. If you've run out of other weight saving thigns then go for it, otherwise there are other places you can save weight.

If I were doing it again, I'd basically start from scratch too. If you're going to put in the time to fully de-loom the harness and eliminate all the unnecessary stuff, you may as well junk the under-hood fusebox and do your own main/fuel pump relays and such.

Between all the brackets and stuff, I think we pulled around 20lbs out. It also took 50 man-hours to do.

just be sure if you build your own harness to use high temp jacketed wire. if you're SUPER baller, I reccommend silver plated with PTFE insulation.

You can get cheap surplus here: http://apexjr.com/wire.html

Do it and make a bulkhead connector point!

And be sure to use genuine Raychem, not a generic polyolefin. Oh, and Autosport connectors, not the cheap plastic Tyco ones.

By that time of course , the harness will be worth more than the car, but hey!

hey i said PTFE, not Teflon!

I want to do this on my car too, maybe over the summer when it's too hot to drive. I want to do a fuse panel in the glove box and wrap everything under the hood in fire-sleeve.

I knocked all mine down to about 20 wires total and spliced it into a Hydra harness. It really only took me 10-12 hours total to do it. I cleared a bunch of crap out and now only have it coming through the passenger side hole. I have messed with harnesses before though. I am currently making an engine controls only harness for a local friend that did a miata motor in his Datsun conertable. I have about 4 hours into it and am maybe halfway done.

Once you mess with it once, it is pretty easy to do it again.

On the custom harness note, does anyone know if there is a place to get our OEM connectors to make a completely new harness ala RYWIRE style?

unless you can see the mfgr logo on the connector, it's going to be hard to determine who makes them. AMP/Tyco makes some, probably Hirose, maybe some others.

But keep in mind you're probably better off joining two wires than you are crimping terminals without the proper crimp tool(s). And those tools aint cheap.

It think there is a deutsch connector in there as well.

And yes, the tool is expensive. I have one from a few years ago and IIRC it was like $75.

$75 would be cheap! Many go for $200 just for the tool, which does not include the die. The Deutch-specific crimpers are at least that much. Some of the tyco crimpers are over $1,000.

While the 4 or 8-way closed-barrel connector crimps are what the pros use, open-barrel terminals can work just fine and are a lot cheaper. The Tyco CPC (Circular Plastic Connectors) are a good lower-cost alternative to the Deutsch connectors.

...But the Deutsch connectors are nice. Another alternative to the Deutsch autosport connectors is their industrial/agricultural line. Similar connectors, but plastic.

For a good crimp tool with lots of die, look at Daniels Manufacturing's AF8. Ebay is a good source, as these are military-grade and used in aviation as well. All that said, you can make yourself crazy finding the right pins for the right connector for the right tool die for the right tool for the right application. I've slowly accumulated parts & tools and will likely get a re-wire done sometime this year.

But, to answer the original poster. Sorry. Wiring problems suck. 99% of your wiring harness is probably fine. Spend a day with a multi-meter checking each wire and connection through your harness. Be sure to pull & tug on the wires while testing. You may find out that the problem is inside one of the connectors. Happened to me once. My intermittent problem was due to a poor connection between two pins in the big injector harness. Took an engine and forever to find. Totally sucked.

Maybe were both thinking of different crimpers here...

ugh! great, i didn't even think of that. now there's potentially a hundred more points of failure.
custom harness it is. apparently not gonna make this next event though. gonna have to take the crx.

I kind of thought it was worth it to strip the harness. It was a lot of work, but the stock wires are high quality and take up less space than cheap aftermarket wires.

found it! it was in one of the connectors at the firewall. so stoked. i'm still gonna strip this harness down over the summer break though. i checked all the suspect looking wires under the hood for continuity and they were good. but they're hard as hell when cold.

If you're building a new harness that has to interface with stock parts, like CAS and you don't want a lot of splices you can buy new connectors, or repin the old connector shells. Most of the engine bay connectors are made by Sumitomo. I was able to buy most of them from Ballenger Motorsports.

http://www.bmotorsports.com/shop/ind.../cPath/109_110

awesome

I am betting you already know this, but make sure you make a diagram that is color coded or something so you can determine any future issues with ease. If i were to do it over again I would probably start from scratch too. I relocated my fuse box into the cabin and used bulkhead plugs on the firewall for ease of removal in the future.

It can all be seen in the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf0g5...&tracker=False

that is awesome modernbeat. thanks!
i'll be watching your video as soon as my boss leaves the area snowboarder.
some really good info in here!